Celestial Land and Sea (11 page)

They sat around the wooden table in the kitchen that Donal had led them to. Grace tried to remain calm as she studied the room. It became apparent that she was currently in the O'Malley household—this was
Gráinne's
kitchen—and part of her felt as though this were the most natural place in the world for her to be, a sense of belonging, a familiarity, and it provided her with a peculiar comfort that she hadn't expected.

There was certainly no doubt in the minds of Donal or Cathleen that she belonged there. As far as they were concerned, she was Gráinne O'Malley. They didn't seem concerned in the slightest by the difference in her accent or her lack of understanding of pretty much everything they said to her. They had no knowledge of Grace Byrne, and that didn't seem to matter to anybody. Right now, Grace had to put her own identity aside and concentrate on helping them.

"When did this happen?" she asked.

"Yesterday. Word only reached us this hour."

"Who was it?"

"Lord Bingham's men: I can't be certain Bingham was there himself, but it would not surprise me if he were. His thirst for blood has grown barbaric over the years. I should wonder whether or not he has any control over his own desires anymore." Donal's knee bounced up and down as he pumped his foot in agitation.

"Oh, this is just terrible!" Cathleen interrupted, wailing.

As much as Grace could have done without the girl's dramatic outburst, she knew she was right. There had only been one short paragraph about Tibbott in the article she'd read, but for reasons she couldn't explain she'd found herself drawn to it, and ended up reading it several times. She had learned about this situation, and she knew just how serious it was.

"What should we do?" she asked Donal.

"I was hoping you would have an idea."

"Me?"

"Gráinne, I trust you with this. We all trust you. We know you'll do the right thing. If it were down to me, I would hunt Bingham down and charge straight at him with the sharpest sword I could find, but even I do not believe that that it would be the right thing to do. Not when Tibbott's life is at risk."

"My son..." Grace spoke the words in a whisper with her head bowed toward the table, trying to absorb the situation, and overcome with the emotions that once had belonged to Gráinne. She had carried the boy, endured the pains of childbirth, and spent the subsequent years raising him and watching him grow. How awful it must be, as Grace was now discovering, to hear that one's child has been captured and is locked up somewhere far away.

"Oh, Miss Gráinne!" Cathleen rushed to Grace's side and knelt on the floor beside her. She clutched Grace's left arm and began to sob. 'We must save him; he's too young to die!'

Donal shot her a glance which she instantly understood as a sign to be quiet. She sniffed, wiping the back of her hand over her eyes to dry her tears. "I'm sure that Tibbott will come to no harm; we just need to find a way to bring him back to us. I have every faith that Gráinne will think of something, but in the meantime perhaps we should all use our heads a bit more to try to come up with a plan. And Cathleen, I would prefer it if you didn't spread this around the island. The fewer people who know about Tibbott's capture the better. At least until we can work out what we're going to do, then we can alert the necessary people. Honestly, I can't believe he would do such a thing. He wasn't prepared for it. He never would have succeeded in that state."

"Why did he do it?" Grace asked, already knowing the answer in her heart.

"He is just as fed up as we are, Gráinne. I do not blame him for wanting to fight against Bingham. We are losing more and more land each day, and what little supplies we have left for food are not exactly in the best of condition. Tibbott is fighting for what is rightfully ours, as we all are. He just didn't manage to time it right. It wasn't organised properly. We will defeat the English, Gráinne, I promise..."

Grace was starting to feel more like Gráinne O'Malley than Grace Byrne, but there was still a large part of her that felt out a character. There were times when she felt as if she were possessed by Gráinne's spirit, as if her own had been taken over, but she had to remind herself that she wasn't really Gráinne, was she? And Tibbott wasn't really her son. And she lived in England now. How would Donal react if he found that out? She wanted to confess everything, to stand up and shout that she wasn't really who they thought she was, but even if she decided that doing so would be a good idea, they would likely not believe her. They'd say she was delirious. She wasn't sure what the protocol was for signs of weak mental health in the sixteenth century, but she was certain that appearing to be mad would not do anybody good. As long as she was wearing Gráinne's boots, she had to be Gráinne.

Deciding to remain quiet about her true identity, she went along with the situation. She had to confess to herself that it wasn't too difficult to do. She had a great deal of compassion for Tibbott, something which she could not describe. Not only did she feel that it was her duty to rescue Gráinne's son, but it was something she knew she ached for too.

"How long do you think we have?" she finally asked.

"I'm afraid there's no way of knowing. Although we cannot be sure what Bingham will do to him now that he's locked up, we cannot take any risks. We must act as quickly as possible, that much is certain."

"Yes, of course. I'll think of something. It's not going to be easy though.'

"Nothing is ever easy with that brute Bingham."

"Poor, poor Tibbott," Cathleen added.

"He just never seems to stop. You know how difficult things are now, and I'm certain that all of it is Bingham's fault. We are losing more and more each day. If it continues much longer, I dare say we won't have anything left. There'll be no cattle or land to call our own."

"Whatever are we going to do?" Cathleen wailed once more.

"The harsh weather is a threat to our crops, which are already in a diminished state. Our land isn't just rapidly declining because of that thief Bingham—what little we do have left is also deteriorating in quality. Even if he left us what remains, we would still struggle to produce enough."

Grace could tell that times were difficult for them, but she hadn't quite realised the extent of the situation until now. Their misfortunes made her reconsider the effects of the financial problems everybody was facing back home in her own century, and just how insignificant it was for many in comparison.

"He will be okay, Gráinne, won't he?" Cathleen had finally calmed down but still clung loosely to Grace's arm.

Grace turned to look at her: "Of course he will be, Cathleen. Don't worry."

How she prayed that she was right.

 

"Good evening to you, Chieftain." The man nodded at Grace. He and another were humping a bundle of straw down the hill when she noticed them. She smiled at them, not paying too much attention to the fact that she had no idea why they were calling her that, but instead thought to herself that it was quite a peculiar time to be working outside in the darkness.

The wind picked up as Grace crossed over the hill. She had left Donal and Cathleen together in the kitchen. Donal suggested she might be able to think more clearly if she went up to her castle—which Grace assumed was Donal's code for encouraging her to escape from Cathleen's hysterics—and Grace's curiosity had overruled the situation. Ordinarily she would not have taken too kindly to being left alone in an old castle in the middle of nowhere on her own at night, but she had been mesmerised by it when she first saw it, and had been longing to take a closer look.

She pulled a woollen shawl tighter around her neck as she continued over the grass. Cathleen had fetched the garment for her before she left, insisting that she wear it so that she didn't catch her death outside. Grace was thankful for the gesture as the evening had turned bitter cold. The material may have been scratchy against her neck, but at least it prevented the wind from reaching her skin.

The houses behind her grew smaller in the distance as she approached the castle. She stopped a few metres outside of it so that she could study its structure. It wasn't what she would have pictured when she considered a castle. There was no drawbridge. It had no moat. There was no sign of any flag flying from the top of it. It was considerably smaller than Grace would have imagined, too. 

In the darkness the castle's grey stone walls looked a lot more intimidating than they did when Grace had caught a glimpse of them in daylight. She didn't wish to look directly up at the windows out of the fear that she'd end up seeing a face staring back at her.

The entrance to the castle was facing her now. A little way in the distance she could see the ship.  The sea stretched out before her, the castle standing a few metres away from the edge of the island. She could almost feel the sea clinging to her as the waves sprayed and splashed, thrown about by the wind. She clutched onto her shawl and headed for the door.

The entrance was situated inside a small shelter as a grey stone corridor reached out from the main building. It was barely two metres tall and not so long, but it was enough to keep the wind away from Grace's face. She stood in the little corridor, sheltered, facing the door.

The door itself was made of a dark wood. Thin copper strips ran down its front to strengthen it. The handle itself was made from iron, the metal hoop rusting in age. Beneath it Grace noticed a small keyhole, not dissimilar from the one on the door at the top of the landing back in Hampstead.

It suddenly occurred to her that she didn't have a key for the castle. If the door was locked she wouldn't be able to get inside.

Grace placed one hand on the handle and wrapped her fingers round it. The metal was cold against her bare hand. Hoping that the door wasn't locked, she turned the handle counter-clockwise and pushed.

The heavy wood only budged an inch to begin with, taking much more effort than Grace had expected. She leaned her weight against it and forced it open just enough for her to squeeze her body through and into the castle.

It was much darker inside the castle than it was outside. A few candles were placed upon the walls, white pillars resting inside purpose-built stone pockets. They were already lit, just as the one on the ship had been. She blinked a few times, adjusting to the dim lighting.

Directly in front of her, against the castle's right wall, stood the bottom of a staircase, the steps embedded into the stone. She couldn't see what lay at the top of them as they spiralled out of sight.  To her left was a small doorway, arched at the top. Leaving the stairs for the meantime, she crossed through the doorway and entered a long rectangular room. The floor was made of the same stone as the exterior of the castle; she was thankful at that moment for the protection Gráinne's boots provided her from the cold, coarse surface.

It shocked Grace to find that this room, aside from the several lit candles that were evenly spread out along the walls to allow her just enough light to see, was completely empty. She walked further into the room to where the arrow-slit window was on the back wall. It allowed a little trickle of the natural moonlight from outside to cast a faint silver glow onto a pile of jagged rocks that sat in the far corner. Grace bent down and picked one up.

She held the rock in her hand then gave it a gentle squeeze to confirm its physicality. "How can this be real?" she wondered aloud, her voice but a whisper. "How can I be here? I don't understand..."

She sighed, accepting that there was nobody there to respond to the desperation in her voice, and brushed away her frustration as she let the rock drop back onto the pile with the others. Straightening up, she walked back to the archway. The room resembled little more than a ruin. If it weren't for the candles, then she never would have guessed it was inhabited.

With nothing else to see on the ground floor she started up the stairs. Although her pathway was guided by the soft glow of the candles, she took caution as she felt out each step with the toes of the boots. The steps seemed to be secured quite well, but she could not afford to make a wrong move. If she slipped and fell, there would be nobody here to help her.

She followed the winding staircase, occasionally pressing her hands against the walls to balance herself in the narrow space, until she reached the first stopping point. As with the lower level, a few candles lined the walls to provide her with a source of light. However, much to Grace's disappointment, this floor was little improvement on the previous.

The space was much larger, with two archways dividing the floor into two square rooms. The floor, Grace noticed, was wooden, though not polished or even. It was pale and worn, as if it had stood the test of four centuries. Grace had expected to find the castle in the condition it had been in during Gráinne's lifetime. There was no way for her to work out whether or not it had looked this way in the sixteenth century, or if this is what it would look like if she visited it in her own time. Either way, she wasn't particularly fond of it. There was a strong draft in the room coming from the two square windows, one situated in each section, and it was starting to make her wish that she was back outside.

Thinking she'd not find much on the third floor either, Grace climbed the rest of the stairs. At first glance, everything was as she had expected: the floor was made from rugged wood, and the walls were bare, with the exception of the occasional lit candle. This room was also apparently divided; not all was visible at once. From where she stood she could make out another archway at the end of a narrow corridor, but she was unable to see what lay beyond. She proceeded through the corridor, her enthusiasm for the exploration of the castle dampened by the bleakness of the previous two floors, expecting to be just as disappointed by this room as she had been by the rest. It was only as she approached the archway that she noticed the light glowing in the room beyond it.

The light emitted the same soft glow as the other candles, except it couldn't be coming from just one candle—it was far too bright. She stood still, unable to see directly into the other room. Had the entire castle been lit this brightly then she would not have given it a second thought, but it seemed peculiar that the rest of the building remained in near darkness except for this one room. Breathing deeply, she closed her eyes for a moment, giving herself a second or two to gather her thoughts. Whatever she might find in that room, she had to be ready for it.